Macungie To Get Relief From Siren Wails

The piercing ambulance siren in Macungie will be sounding less often in the future because Borough Council has approved a timer for the device - and limited the siren to one blast of three minutes.

Councilman Gregory Hutchison said Lehigh County dispatchers sound the siren "and it rings until they cut it off. If not, it keeps on ringing."

Usually, the siren sounds two times for four minutes.

Borough Secretary Clarence Mohr said people get tired of hearing the siren. "It goes 25 to 30 minutes sometimes. It went for a half-hour at midnight here. They ran out to an accident and forgot to shut it off," he said.

Council members considering limiting the siren to two four-minute blasts but settled on one blast of three minutes.

Councilman Hutchison, chairman of the fire and ambulance committee and the sole dissenter on the time limit, said some ambulance corps members in outlying areas say they can't hear the siren if it rings for a short time.

He said he might feel different about the timer if the borough helps the corps get more pagers. The corps has 10 now and is soliciting funds to buy 10 more.

In other matters, council Monday night denied a resident's request for a traffic light on Main Street near Church Street and Macungie Village's request to be released from municipal garbage charges.

Council President Donald Hamm said after the meeting that the traffic light was denied because of cost and because a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation traffic count indicates it is not needed.

Council didn't discuss the Macungie Village motion before voting to deny it. "We went through the courts with this and won incourt, so why should we contradict ourselves now?" said Hamm.

Council also denied a Lower Macungie Township request to change an existing agreement governing its allocation for the Macungie sanitary sewer system. Macungie assigns a usage rate of 350 gallons per day to Lower Macungie homes that are not metered.

The township asked to drop the figure to 150 gallons per day for apartments, condominiums or mobile homes and 275 gallons per day for other residences.

Sewage from two parts of the township's Phase 3 sewer project -- Walnut Street and Ancient Oak South -- will be discharged into the borough's system to get to the interceptor line. Macungie engineer Paul Kunkel told council he saw no reason to change the existing agreement. He said he could only guess that the requested change could possible spread Lower Macungie's allocation further.

In other business, council:

- Passed an ordinance amending the zoning code to allow for apartments in the "M" or manufacturing zone. Solicitor Thomas Wallitsch said the ordinance "permits the use in manufacturing zones and the areas the ordinance changes are minimal."

Part of the agreement of sale between the borough and K&D Construction, Macungie, for the construction company's purchase of the borough-owned Saucony Shoe factory was that it be rezoned. K&D has said it wants to turn the old building into apartments.

- Passed a motion to have the solicitor prepare an ordinance to make Lea Street one-way north from Cotton to Walnut streets.

- Was told by engineer Kunkel that the storm sewer repair was done at Main and Church, which should clear up the longtime water problems in that area. "Apparently when they raked the road (years ago), they caught the top of the pipe and tore two holes in it, which clogged the pipe. They had to put a new 12-foot piece of pipe in," Kunkel said.

- Told the engineer to check into the cause of a water problem in the basement of George Eisenhard's S. Chestnut Street home when it rains. Mohr said Eisenhard complained that water from an unopened portion of Vine Street runs down to Carpenter Street and across Carpenter to his property. He said he had 5 feet of water in his basement during the last storm.

- Set the date for the Macungie Halloween Parade for Oct. 26 and Trick-or- Treat Night Oct. 25 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.